So this game has dps checks but we can't talk about our dps in game?

[Packetdancer]

I'm guessing rather than not disengaging, they were just late to their position or someone else was improperly positioned. Could still be because they're tunneling on their rotation or something, but aetherial Shackles should be completely safe to resolve in melee range of the boss.

Generally their explanation, so far as I've seen in my PF adventures on my alt, has been "I wasn't going to move before I got in my positionals!" as to why someone with a far chain was standing due south of the boss (and thus tethering to the inner players instead of the outer). Which, functionally, is "tunneling on their rotation" as you suggest, just doing so consciously and deliberately and aware of the potential consequences. Though a surprising number are also evidently unaware you can still be in melee range and resolve the far tethers.

(Also, for the love of the Twelve, you can hit a rear positional from the intercardinal. And for any situation you're uncertain about, there's True North. Please freakin' use it.)

[Ronduwil]

1. Okay great, I'm playing a melee and I just sit at wall spamming my ranged attack until I know its SUPER SAFE then I use my buffs willy nilly and clip all my gcd's during burst windows. See how ridiculous that sounds?

Yes. Anything sounds ridiculous when taken to extremes. There's a happy medium between going out of your way to sabotage your own DPS and pursuing optimal DPS at all costs.

I don't know why the idea that playing optimally = greedy is so common, its really asinine. Playing optimally just means that you don't completely waste your damage by doing very basic things such as buff alignment and proper GCD usage.

Playing optimally means that you spend time that could have been spent enjoying yourself in a game on doing homework and downloading third party tools. Some players make that choice, and that's fine. Some players just want to play the game, and that's fine, too.

If every player sandbagged to do mechanics, nothing high end in the game would be clearable until an egregious gear creep occured. To do high-end content while it is relevant, you need to be able to do both mechanics and decent damage, end of story.

There's a difference between deliberately sandbagging and simply not playing the game as if it were your livelihood. I agree that the most high end content is unclearable to most players. That's as it should be. I agree that to do high end content you need to do both mechanics and decent damage. I disagree that every player should be doing high end content. Most players don't want to do it, nor should they. If I wanted to play a game that shifted all in-game progression into high end content, I'd still be playing WoW.

[Ronduwil]

2. How can there be an in-game tutor if the devs themselves have no idea what that optimal rotation is? A parser isn't inherently a toxic or malicious tool, it just displays data from the combat log visually.

The devs know what it is. How do you think content gets balanced? The skills are deliberately designed with a rotation in mind. That's why most of your GCD skills trigger procs that boost the potency of the next GCD skill that was intended to be in the rotation. No one said the parser was inherently toxic or malicious. The malice is in the majority of players, and the parser is the ideal tool to bring it out. To quote YoshiP on ACT:

That system will be the root of bullying. I'm 100% confident in that... I know you'll see this in party finder: "Only join if you can prove DPS XXX amount." We never want that to happen. Sometimes you go in a dungeon after taking a break from the game. Your item level might not be as high as others' that have been playing. It just becomes like that. It's inevitable for people to start to crave efficiency. I personally don't enjoy games that are all based off efficiency.

I wholeheartedly agree with that.

And no, you don't need Discord for Extreme or Savages, a lot of players clear these through PF. Which is where the frustration comes from.

If you're not using Discord for Extreme or Savages, then prepare to be frustrated. It's common sense. You don't have to take frustration for your own mistake out on others who ignorantly joined a Savage group without realizing everything it entailed. We don't need a built-in addon to help you abuse players who are just trying to have a good time.

Normal raids and Alliance raids have DPS checks, hell even some dungeons have DPS checks. Its just apart of the game. And I've seen failure in all three. The problem isn't that its impossible to overcome terrible dps, the problem is that it happens at all for a very dumb reason. If the XIV commnuity really is one public meter away from becoming a cesspool, then it wasn't a very nice community to begin with and I think most people on this game need a reality check.

And those DPS checks are laughably low. I can count the number of times it's happened to me running duty finder content multiple times a day almost every day in the last year on one hand. Like I said earlier, those failures were, in every case, a result of players not even knowing mechanics. It's kind of hard to hit the DPS check with half the players in the raid are out of commission for half the duration of the DPS check. In every such case I've seen, explaining the mechanics so that we're not trying to clear the DPS check with 9 floor inspectors in tow solves the problem. I think you're the one in need of a reality check here.

[Ronduwil]

3. Everytime this topic comes up you guys like to project onto people who care about performance. If you don't care about how you perform when grouped with others, you aren't a casual, you're just negligent and selfish.

I'm not sure what you think I'm projecting on you. Some people simply don't have the reflexes, coordination, experience, or resources to perform at an optimal level. That's how it is. It's not a matter of being selfish. It's a matter of understanding that this is a video game, not a job. Unlike a job, there is no penalty for not meeting your numbers. I'll sleep fine knowing that we would have cleared that boss a few seconds sooner if only I had had my 20 year old self's reflexes. If you want to enter the world first race, join a world first guild, and go hard. Just don't expect everyone else to be like you.

If you are going to queue for group content that involves other random people and they're spending time to get the dungeon done, there is and should be an expectation to pull your weight and participate in an appropriate manner. That isn't hardcore or toxic, its just called being polite. If you fail to do this, you should be called out for it because anyone can meet this standard by just taking 10 minutes to think about their play.

I think we agree on that. I just think that there's a huge difference in expectations between us. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not AFKing and you're making an effort to learn and follow mechanics, you're doing your part. I don't think anyone is a jerk just because they're not performing like a world-first guild member.

The suggestion that someone can join a dungeon and just single-target/auto-attack their way through the entire thing, and that they're entitled to do so at the expense of three other people is quite frankly stupid as hell. If everyone played like that, things would be miserable.

I've never seen anyone single-target/auto-attack their way through content. Maybe because I don't use a parser. Your rage over this non-issue is precisely the reason they will never build a parser into the game. I play to the best of my ability, and I hope everyone else does the same. Yesterday I ran Cutter's Cry with three sprouts, and two of them were on the floor for three quarters of the chimera fight because they didn't know to get away from the ram abilities and get close for the dragon abilities, and neither the tank nor I could heal them. So in the end the tank and I two-manned the boss. Was I salty? Heck, no! It was the most fun I've had in a long time! The other two players learned something new, and they were grateful. I enjoyed my commendation and moved on. Not once did I think that the run would have been better if I had posted parser numbers every five minutes and used them to justify vote kicks.

[Packetdancer]

Yesterday I ran Cutter's Cry with three sprouts, and two of them were on the floor for three quarters of the chimera fight because they didn't know to get away from the ram abilities and get close for the dragon abilities, and neither the tank nor I could heal them. So in the end the tank and I two-manned the boss. Was I salty? Heck, no! It was the most fun I've had in a long time! The other two players learned something new, and they were grateful.

Brief digression, but I always like to give sprouts in there a tip that "RAM means SCRAM, while DRAGON means you should DRAG yourself IN close". I.e., Ram means "get the heck away", dragon means "go hug the chimera".

I have a color-based alternative mnemonic I can pull out as well -- "If it's violet, stay by it. If it's blue, better shoo!" -- but I prefer to teach "Ram means Scram" because there are about 8 billion chimera/garms/whatever in this game, and literally only the one in Cutter's Cry uses color-based toast notifications about eye color, while all of them -- including the one in Cutter's Cry -- use "Ram's Voice" and "Dragon's Voice" casts.

So "Ram means Scram" will serve them as a sufficient mnemonic through the entire rest of the game, rather than just that one chimera.

[Fhaerron]

"quadruple weaving"

there are no dps checks for anything below extreme. You can autoattack normal raid bosses and regular trials to death.

Also in PF groups I'm happy to see someone have food at all, "wrong" or not.

I wonder though, since the lockout is 90 mins, if all people just auto attack the normal trial/raid bosses how long it will take before the boss dies.




But yeah you can use that tool. Remember back when the first ultimate was released? Yeah yoshi P was linking streams of the world first race teams and well they had parsers on their screen. Also more recently the first 3 teams to clear P4S that he tweeted and congratulated, those are all parsing players as well.

Just don't harras people with it and you be good.


And while I don't really want to recommend this because 'ghosting' can make an individual feel sad, you can just kick people from the group without a word (not saying anything is actually safer for you because if you would complain about lack of dps you could get a ban), you can just use the 'difference in playstyle' and you be good.

[LittleImp]

I wonder though, since the lockout is 90 mins, if all people just auto attack the normal trial/raid bosses how long it will take before the boss dies.

There was actually a speedkill group that did a 1 hour 22 minute and 35 second kill of P1N, where the damage was almost exclusively auto attacks, though I think they also spent substantial amounts of time NOT hitting the boss.

[Packetdancer]

There was actually a speedkill group that did a 1 hour 22 minute and 35 second kill of P1N, where the damage was almost exclusively auto attacks, though I think they also spent substantial amounts of time NOT hitting the boss.

I feel this should not be called a "speedkill" but a "snailkill".

[Dewslam]

You can't talk about it because MMO players have brainworms that make them unable to talk about parsers without turning into shit flinging apes. Like, yeah if people are failing a DPS check and we can improve our rotation we can talk about it. But that's never how the conversation goes. More often than not you get someone, in the middle of a normal dungeon or alliance raid, screaming about how everyone else sucks because they're playing a level 45 monk suboptimally and telling them to kill themselves for it.

[RHarris1349]

I agree with you regarding the aggro-meter, let everyone be mad their multitude of third-party programs give wrong information.

The issue with parsers is they don’t take from the game-server, they take data from the client. THERE’S THE BIG HINT WHY PLAYERS DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR PARSER. ALSO IT’S A LITTLE CREEPY but maybe that last part is just me. Just comes off a little stalkerish, righ?

I think you’re doing it right, OP. People just want to defend their custom bs.